It’s become a cliché to call something a mechanical work of art but if ever a motorcycle deserved that accolade it’s the Ducati 1299 Superleggera.
Dripping in carbon fibre, replete with titanium, it flaunts endless examples of technological innovation found on nothing else with two wheels and a motor. Clothed in bodywork of stunning beauty, this latest testament to Ducati’s ability to combine exquisite looks with stellar performance was launched at the EICMA Show last November. Just 500 will be built, costing Euro 80,000 (£72,000 in the UK).
But even if you’ve got the money, if your order isn’t in, then tough luck. All 500 bikes are already spoken for, netting the VW-owned manufacturer a cool Euro 40 million of extra revenue. And it’s deserved, as this is the finest street-legal motorcycle I’ve yet had the privilege of riding.
The 1299 Superleggera marks a significant landmark in Ducati history. With the advent next year of Ducati’s first V4 Superbike, this is the last of the line of desmo V-twin street-legal race bikes. It’s the ultimate evolution of a unique format which has garnered 14 World Superbike Riders titles and 15 Manufacturers crowns. Ducati twins winning 329 races (and counting) in the past 30 seasons.
It’s a line which began in 1974 with the debut of the green-frame 750SS. Just 401 examples were ever made as a pretty close replica of Paul Smart’s Imola 200-winning factory desmo V-twin. Just as the new Ducati 1299 Superleggera mimics the factory F17 Superbikes being raced this season by Chaz Davies and Marco Melandri. Actually, it’s even better than them chassis-wise, with a carbon fibre semi-monocoque frame structure that saves 1.7kg in weight over the racer’s heavier aluminium equivalent. It’s pretty close in engine performance, too, with a claimed 215bhp/158.1kW at 11,000rpm, 15bhp more than the Panigale R. Those 500 customers will certainly get their money’s worth, even with the sky high price tag.
Having begun my racing career back in the mists of time as one of the lucky owners of a green-frame 750SS, bought new in 1974, I still race in Classic F750 events on what is apparently the last genuine bike to be used in something approaching anger. So for me the honour was especially meaningful to be one of the eight journalists invited to sample the 1299 Superleggera at Mugello.
Scaling a featherweight 156kg dry, or a mere 178kg ready to roll with a full 17-litre fuel tank, Ducati says it was “Created to provide quintessential performance”. And after riding it I reckon its engineers have hit the bullseye. That’s an opinion shared by the firm’s CEO Claudio Domenicali, who rode the Superleggera the day before I did and pronounced himself proud of what his men had achieved. They don’t come any better than this – nor any more exquisitely engineered.
Settle aboard the Superleggera’s 830mm-high seat and you’ll encounter an unmistakably racy riding position, with quite a lot of your body weight on your arms and shoulders. Hit the starter button and relish the muted sound of thunder from the race exhaust supplied free with the bike as part of the race kit. Fitted for my ride, it further increases power by 5bhp via with its massive 80mm-diameter drainpipe collector issuing through the twin silencer outlets in the space under the seat. Select bottom gear – and you’re off. That’s the last time you’ll need to touch the clutch lever before you return to the pits; the auto-blipper is switchable but you’d be crazy to turn it off because it works so well.
Anyway, you don’t have to work the gear lever very hard on the 1299 Superleggera because this ultimate version of the Superquadro motor has massive midrange punch. It’s no longer critical to choose the right gear for each section of track, as it is with the much less torquey 1199 Panigale. In fact it’s better to use one gear higher in many places than you might otherwise, and hold that gear from way low to way high. I found I could lap the entire 5.245km/3.259mi Mugello circuit from the end of the kilometre-long main straight back to the start of it with just three gearchanges, in spite of the quartet of chicanes and the steep climb up to Arrabbiata 1 & 2. I’d use second gear for San Donato at the end of the straight, short shift into third climbing uphill to the Luco chicane. I could hold third gear all the way round the rest of the track to the short straight after the Biondetti chicane, when I’d grab fourth briefly before backshifting to third for the long, long Bucine downhill sweeper on to the main straight. To convince myself I wasn’t being lazy, I checked the onboard lap timer in the Ducati Data Analyser included in the race kit, which you set with the flash button as you cross the startline then leave the GPS mounted at the front of the bike to trigger each lap. A comparison with using the gears and revving the bike hard told me I was going faster the lazy way. That let me focus more on choosing a line and maximising turn speed.
The 1299 Superleggera starts to pick up engine speed a bit faster just above 5,000 rpm, and from there to its torque peak at 9,000 rpm there’s a delicious wave of grunt that you look forward to surfing each time you catch it. But even after that peak has been reached the midrange torque doesn’t fall away. It stops building, but stays pretty much constant all the way to 11,000 rpm, by which point the orange shifter lights either side of the TFT dash will light up to tell you to hit another gear. They flash red brightly at 12,000 rpm in the bottom five gears to tell you that you’re about to hit the 12,500 rpm soft revlimiter. Being an RBW digital throttle there’s no cutout – you just stop building speed and revs. But there’s no need to rev it right out to the limiter like on the less grunty 1199 Panigale. Just ride it like some sort of twist’n’go mega-scooter and surf that torque curve. The combination of level 4 DWC and DTC traction control set at level 3 (both out of eight) delivered intoxicating drive out of turns, with the extra torque giving no hint of understeer under power. The Superleggera hugs a tight line as you wind on the revs thanks to the new Ducati Slide Control programme which helps it close a turn on the throttle, as well as the dialled in chassis geometry and the sublime compliance of the Öhlins rear shock. It’s an ultra-precise, predictable package that’s so enjoyable and rewarding to ride, electronic rider aids making it safer and more confidence inspiring than before.
DSC lets you accelerate harder and earlier through a corner in a controlled drift, which means you finish turning sooner and can thus nail the throttle wide open earlier. I’d like to be able to tell you that I was doing this every lap at every turn, but working your mind up to doing this is hard. A bit like convincing yourself that you CAN take a big handful of brake on the angle deep into a turn on a hub-centre bike like a Bimota Tesi or Vyrus. It’s only when you break through the mental barrier of doing so just once and find you haven’t crashed, that you’ve reprogrammed your mental mindset. Towards the end of my stint on the Superleggera I was getting the hang of doing this at Palagio, the exit of the tightest of the chicanes and probably the slowest corner on the track. But I could honestly feel the rear Pirelli SC1 race tyre the Ducati was wearing starting to walk under me there, without digging in and highsiding me. I can’t wait for the trickle-down effect to take place so I can try to improve my DSC technique on something that doesn’t cost 80K Euro and a mountain of cash to fix crash damage!
Hard though it is to ignore the extra power and greater torque of this EVO-motor, it’s the refined handling of the 1299 Superleggera that really impresses. To begin with I found myself doing something I hadn’t been prepared for, which was to oversteer into the apex of a turn. This meant I repeatedly had to pick the Ducati up again and correct my line. I’ve been riding on carbon wheels ever since 1994 so I know how much they influence turn-in and steering and I’m always ready to compensate for them. You have to focus on being more delicate in steering the bike, which I’d thought I was doing. But then I realised that I hadn’t taken into account the even lighter weight of the new Superleggera’s carbon fibre chassis or the other black magic bits on this uber-desmo V-twin sportbike.
This made the Superleggera even lighter-steering than the Chaz Davies Superbike I last rode at Imola 18 months ago, when flicking from side to side in the quartet of Mugello chicanes. I thought I might be imagining this until Ducati test rider Alessandro Valia confirmed my impressions afterwards. The lighter carbon fibre chassis structure and all the other CF parts definitely make the new Ducati more nimble and responsive in changing direction, especially at lower speeds, when it turns super-easily and tightly. This bike is faster steering and more agile than any other desmo V-twin I’ve yet ridden, and that includes the current factory Superbike.
Some are wary of carbon frames. This is the chassis format which defeated Valentino Rossi in his two years at Ducati in 2011-12. The Desmosedici’s carbon frame that was essentially identical in concept to the Superleggera’s and gave him no feel from the front end. He eventually insisted on a conventional Deltabox frame format which wasn’t any better, suggesting the problem lay elsewhere. And remember, Casey Stone took the carbon framed Ducati Desmosedici to victory first time out at Qatar in 2009.
OK, so I’m not Valentino but I truly had confidence in the way the front end spoke to me, allowing me to keep up turn speed in Mugello’s swoopy, sweeping turns. The way that Ducati has compacted the mass of the bike with the Superquadro engine architecture makes for a motorcycle that is very agile and predictable in the way it changes direction. The 1299’s slightly sharper steering geometry versus the 1199 is surely an element in that, too. It was rewarding to put your faith in the front Pirelli and keep up momentum because there was good feedback from the front end even on the side of the tyre. Thanks to the stiff yet light chassis it pays to be quite aggressive in changing direction on the Superleggera; you can speed up without the bike feeling nervous or flighty. It was also very stable in a straight line, with the taller screen from the race kit fitted for the test.
The Brembo brakes are absolutely superlative, and it takes longer than I had on the Superleggera to start exploring their limits meaningfully. By swapping the pages on the TFT dash I saw 295kph on the speedo down the kilometre-long main straight with its long downhill entry before stopping hard and backshifting into the second-gear right-hander of San Donato. Each time I mentally cussed myself because it seemed I’d braked too early. Those radial Brembos are so effective, combining balls-out stopping power with so much feel and good modulation as I searched for the right turn speed in a bend. There was definitely more engine braking available in the Race mode than is usual nowadays, without upsetting the stability of the Ducati under braking.
Nothing succeeds like excess, and the Ducati 1299 Superleggera is certainly proof of that, as a fitting last of the line in the desmo V-twin dynasty. Ducati has fittingly saved the best till last, for this desmodromic jewel of a motorcycle is practically faultless and totally addictive, as well as a magnificent beat-that demonstration of Ducati’s engineering expertise. Even more than with the 1199 Superleggera, kudos to Claudio Domenicali for sanctioning the development of the ultra-light 1299 ‘Superleggerissima’, compliments to his engineers for creating it, and congratulations to all 500 of you lucky devils who’ve ordered one. More than ever this time, I hate you all!
Photos: Milagro/Thomas Maccabelli & Rudy Carezzevoli
